There's a lot of people that deserve a lot of credit and appreciation for their support and efforts towards Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. I try my best to vocalize the appreciation when and if possible, but at times actions speak louder than words.
After the Ukrainian Independence party, I wad approached by a red cross worker who told me about one Vlad.
"Highly motivated, and wants to help the Ukrainian community. Maybe you can guide him, too?"
If I had a penny for everytime I heard those set of words. In the last year and a half, I've seen plenty of people come and go. Almost as if working and helping the people is some sort of a phase they go through or maybe a way to deal with unresolved guilt.
Some have different goals, some get busy, some are just after rewards and benefits that could possibly come through helping people.
I can confidently say, out of the 100s that showed interest in working for the people, only about a handful have stuck through thick and thin and worked relentlessly for the Ukrainian community here.
Nevertheless, I always give everyone the opportunity to show their best and take them under my wing. A blunt spear is better than none. I had slightly moved away from taking people under my wing because I was tired of blunt spears. However, since this recommendation came through the red cross, I decided to have a chat with Vlad.
This is yet another reason why you should never give up on any opportunity.
I was delighted to learn about Vlad who left Ukraine just 2 weeks back. Even more delighted to learn that his vision and motivation is very very VERY similar to mine. To work for the betterment of the people and hope for nothing in return - to put it in a nutshell.
We spoke for hours and had very little to disagree on. Which is not always a good thing, but in this case - it was.
Now, I'm mentoring Vlad. Teaching him how things work around here and will help him bring projects to life that will benefit the Ukrainian community. Almost all of the keystones and action plans we finalized on will require time and further planning.
However, one idea could be realized immediately - to show our appreciation to the locals, we decided to hit the park.
This park is where a lot of locals and Ukrainians spend time. Children play, people have picnics, we do yoga and so much more.
However, the place is pretty dirty. As a quick initiative, we decided to volunteer and tidy up the park, also doubling as a way of giving back by showing thanks in action rather than just words. I grabbed some gloves, trashbags, and a Ukrainian flag to represent. And of course, Vlad.
Not long after we were almost done, the guys from municipality stopped by. I guess there were curious what 2 monkeys were doing with a trashbag and looking through the grass. We told them what we were upto and they joined us and helped us clean up the last bits which were mostly broken glass that we found risky to pick up with just rubber gloves.
At the end, this is what we wanted - to give back to the community that shelters us. Even if by a small act. And the fact that the guys from municipality gave us a contact number for getting cleaning supplies from tge municipality in case we wanted to do this in a much larger scale (which we plan on doing) shows that this small act might have been really accepted as a token of appreciation.
